Tuesday, 18 October 2016

Want to delete a managed component? Use the clone solution feature in CRM 2016.

Have
you ever had the need to delete a component present in a managed
solution? Let’s say, I have a solution ‘Delete From Managed’
with two entities ‘Entity to Retain’ and ‘Entity To Delete’
at the development server. I export it as a managed solution and then
import it at the production server. Everything works fine. Some stage
later, you find that ‘Entity To Delete’ is no longer needed and
you want to remove it from the production server, but you cannot do
so because the solution is a managed one. What do I do now?

Before
CRM 2016, there was a work around to this issue i.e. holding
solution.
In CRM 2016 I’ve found that we could use the clone solution feature
to complete this task.

Let’s
see it step by step.

The
screen below shows my original solution.

First,
I clone the solution at the development server.

Notice
that cloning solution increases the version number of the solution.

I
then, delete the unused entity ‘Entity To Delete’ from the
solution. I export it again as a managed solution and then import it
at the production server.

The
initial screen while importing, where I select the zip file, is shown
below,

I
click next and get the following screen,

I
click next again, and get the following screen,

This
is an important step. Here we need to make sure that we select the
check box named ‘Stage for Upgrade’.

I
click ‘Import’ and the import starts.

Once
the import finishes successfully,your
CRM instance will have two solutions,

DeleteFromManaged

DeleteFromManaged_Upgrade
(CRM creates this renamed solution)

And
you are presented the following screen,

Click
‘Apply Solution Upgrade’.

CRM
2016 will create a solution named same as your solution, but with a
suffix ‘_Upgrade’. CRM 2016 will automatically manage to delete
the component for you, and at successful completion of this step, you
will only have one final solution named ‘DeleteFromManaged’. The
entity ‘Entity To Delete’ will no longer be present at the
production server.

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About Me

Ankit Shah is highly motivated and experienced professional, Bachelor Science in Information Technology -B.Sc. (I.T.) securing more than 8 years of IT experience on software design and development.
Presently Ankit is working as a Dynamics CRM consultant at Inkey Solutions, Surat, India.